'Mad Max: Fury Road' Review: Max as Ass-Kicking Heroine's Sidekick

'Mad Max: Fury Road' review: 'A good movie on its own terms'

Mad Max, the first feature film of director George Miller and the second for the then 23-year-old Mel Gibson, premiered in North America in Feb. 1980. I was 17 years old, crazy about cars and revenge movies, and generally ripe for the picking. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, followed in 1981, deepening devotees' affection for the character and his car. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), was the third film in the series and was equally anticipated, though it has worn over time. It co-starred the Silent Dancer herself, Tina Turner, and her current hit of the day, the name of which I cannot remember and don't want to look.[1] I saw each of them at the time of its respective North American release and relished in them all. Yet I can say that the first achievement of Mad Max: Fury Road is that it stands alone as a film. (See Mad Max: Fury Road trailer below.)

In fact, Mad Max: Fury Road is a good movie on its own terms, without reference to any other films, including the three I just mentioned – something notable in a motion picture universe that believes in the tent-pole-based feeder system, where the summer blockbuster is little more than an appetizer for the fall release of a “companion film,” itself a filler in preparation for the Christmas release of the third installment in a film series for which there is no foreseeable end.

Mad Max: Fury Road, for its part, stands alone, much like its titular hero. Still, one should see the 1979 Mad Max for a complete experience, while aware that George Miller has two more films in the making.

'Mad Max: Fury Road' trailer.

'Fury Road' superior to 'Road Warrior' and 'Beyond Thunderdome'

The second achievement of Mad Max: Fury Road is that it all but erases the need for the existence of the two films that precede it – Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome – both of which I still love because I haven't made the mistake of actually watching them in the last 20 years.

Wisely, Fury Road is neither sequel nor prequel to those iconic classics of the Australian Road Rage genre (see Not Quite Hollywood). Rather, this latest Mad Max is a replacement for those films, which, as it turns out, are better considered as placeholders waiting for the technology to catch up with the mad doctor's concepts for the film he really wanted to make 30 years ago.

That includes sticking star Tom Hardy on a flexible pole attached to a car, surrounded by guys on poles attached to other cars, all speeding along at 80 miles per hour while, very carefully, blowing things up all around them.

And so Fury Road replaces Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome with one film that's better than both of them put together. For all intents and purposes, the film is also the amalgamation of its two predecessors, both visually and narratively.

Destruction and its opposite force

The Mad Max: Fury Road story, which involves the scarcity of water and the sanctification of the mechanistic in a post-apocalyptic society, is certainly Max-ian, as one imagines the next films in the series will be as well.

The juxtaposition of elements in the film generally breaks down along these lines:

Western concerns, iconography, symbols, and history, in addition to the Y chromosome make up one set of forces – generally, the forces of destruction.

The question posed in the film repeatedly is direct: “Who killed the world?” Or, by extension, “Who will kill the world?"

Miller's answer is clear: men. Specifically, men. Salvation will be found in nature and in the replenishing power of the feminine.

'Mad Max: Fury Road' with Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa.

Woman as the Hero

Thus the actual hero of this film – titled Mad Max: Fury Road – is a woman. Imperator Furiosa, played with all the squinty-eyed determination of a young Clint Eastwood by 39-year-old Charlize Theron, owns this movie. And with one arm even.

In other words, the girl in the movie does everything the boy in the movie does, with one arm.

Indeed, the plan to set herself and the slave maidens – trapped in the grip of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, Toecutter in The Road Warrior) – on the way back to her homeland is Furiosa's plan. She intends to make the run to the “green place” with these scantily clad, beautiful young girls, down the Fury Road where nothing but treachery awaits. But it's a good plan.

Ass-kicking 'nature of the feminine'

Anchored by Zoë Kravitz, who is becoming a welcome fixture in a number of films, the maidens include several young actresses who are not just lovely willows. The costumes they wear – little more than linen rags – are deliberate; they are meant to reflect the lascivious nature of the male. Yet the women are ever the road warriors themselves.

Indeed, there is nothing pacifist or even docile in Miller's conception of the nature of the feminine, no matter what they look like or what they are wearing. The feminine will kick your ass in his dystopian world, but only for a fair and righteous cause – to be free.

'Mad Max: Fury Road' with Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky 2015.

Mad Max: The Heroine's Sidekick

Max Rockatansky, on the other hand, is a Man – without a cause except survival. He must choose to do the right thing while clinging to a remnant of himself from a time before men not unlike him destroyed everything.

Now, make no mistake. In Fury Road Mad Max is Furiosa's sidekick, handy and resilient.

Note: I've experienced Mad Max: Fury Road in both the 2D and 3D formats. I suggest you see it in 2D.

[1]Note from the Editor: Tina Turner's song is called “We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).”

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I agree with your take on the gender-political symbolism and messages that Miller is conveying in this current Mad Max incarnation. It was lacking in the the first three, in which the masculine ideal still prevailed. I liked what Furiosa represents, as a gender counterforce to hyper masculinity and mechanism as represented by Joe.

And Fury Road certainly appeals, both visually and sonically. I saw it on a small screen, and I may take another look at it on the big screen, if it's still around.

However, Fury Road lacks the soulful arc of human loss, growth, and redemption that enriched The Road Warrior, and which made the latter a much better story than the former. I wish that Miller had imbued Furiosa more with this growthful progression. I'm fine with Max being a side-kick, a representative of what masculinity could be in Furiosa's vision of a gender-balanced world. I just didn't see Furiosa allow herself to expand her vision through Max's example in the same way, for example, that Max was challenged to do so by the Gyro-Captain in The Road Warrior.

Tinkdnuos

You seem to be the only person in the universe unaware that The Road Warrior is by FAR the best of the original trilogy. The first Mad Max is basically an impatient and barely-necessary prelude to its perfection.